Once Upon a Project Read Online Free PDF

to go alone, even if she met up with her old friends. Besides, if the kids came along she could show them off to Ann Valentine and the rest of those old bats from Dreiser.
    For a second she allowed herself to wonder if Charles Valentine would be there, but she quickly decided that was silly. Charles at a reunion luncheon? Not a chance.
    Too bad. She’d love to see him again.
    â€œMom, you grew up in the projects,” Quentin pointed out. “It probably isn’t even safe for us to go there. I saw on Good Times when the sister got her sweater torn just going to school.”
    â€œWe’re not going to walk around, Quentin. I just feel you should see that everybody hasn’t lived a life as privileged as yours.” Susan sighed. When she and her sister were growing up, parents were doing well just to keep their children well fed and clothed. Now kids wanted trips to Florida, cruises, and the Wisconsin Dells. And many of them, hers included, got what they wanted.
    â€œAre those the projects you lived in, Mommy?” Alyssa asked.
    â€œNo, Alyssa.” The opening and closing credits of the old TV sitcom depicted the infamous Cabrini-Green projects, now being torn down. The fictional Evans family lived on the South Side of Chicago; the real Cabrini-Green had been north of downtown.
    Alyssa asked another question. “Is Daddy coming, too?”
    She kept her voice light. “Oh, probably not. Daddy likes to relax on the weekends. He works very hard to take care of us and to pay for all the nice things we have.”
    It was true that Bruce provided handsomely for them, and that his position as owner of a credit card–processing company required long hours. But in the months since her diagnosis and treatment, he’d suddenly started to say he needed to work even later. When Susan put that together with the decline in their once-vigorous sex life, it had the smell of an affair. Naturally she expressed her concerns to him, and he vigorously denied any wrongdoing.
    She didn’t believe it for a minute.
    Relations between her and Bruce looked smooth as pudding on the outside. Even Quentin and Alyssa had no idea of any discord. Susan knew Bruce loved her. But he didn’t desire her anymore, and that made her feel unattractive and sad.
    Once Charles had loved her, too. She wondered what his opinion of her now would be.
    Then Quentin asked the question she’d been expecting. “Do we have to go, Mom?”
    â€œI’d really like you to, Quentin. I know it’s an afternoon you’ll never get back, but by the same token, it’s only an afternoon. It’s not going to scar you for life.”
    â€œAwright.”

Chapter 4
    Mid-March
    Chicago
    Â 
    P at lounged on her living room sofa, her feet propped up on the oak coffee table, going over the list of RSVPs the restaurant staff had taken down and turned over to her. Nearly a hundred people had responded. She submitted a PSA about the event to the local radio station to announce on its Community Calendar, and also posted flyers in supermarkets and at beauty and barber shops all over the South Side. She sent postcards to anyone she had a current address for, and she also looked up telephone numbers in the phone book and online.
    She grinned happily when she saw the words “Susan Bennett Dillahunt, party of three,” on the list. So her old friend had decided to drive down from her home across the Wisconsin state line. Pat would be glad to see her. It had been too long.
    It seemed like yesterday when the four of them walked to and from school together, wearing their Mary Janes and knee socks with pleated skirts or corduroy jumpers. Pat hated corduroy to this day; to her it would always represent a fabric only poor people or toddlers wore. They must have gone through a dozen fashion fads since grammar school: Those striped woolen caps with the extra yarn and the balls on the end that streamed down their backs, in a